An Open Letter to the Labour Party About Unity - From a Labour Party Member

01/07/2016 12:48 BST
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Updated
02/07/2017 10:12 BST

Dear Labour Party - its leadership, its MPs and its members,

I joined the Labour Party around a year ago. I joined to shape the Labour Party into the organisation that I want it to become, the organisation that I think I could vote for - and the organisation that could win general elections, to do right by the people of this country. A year on, I do not see this party as one that I want to be part of.

All Labour members carry a party card, which reads

"by the strength of our common endeavour we achieve more than we achieve alone."

And honestly, I see very few MPs, and fewer members, standing by this founding principle of the party we all love.

I am not writing this to you, to argue for or against any actions that have taken place in the Labour Party over the last week, because that is not the big issue here. The big issue is about what the party is becoming. This week, for the first time since I joined, I'm hearing murmurings - in the news, amongst the membership and online. Murmurings that terrify me. Things that will do more to harm this party than any resignation ever could. Things I thought were party history. Things like deselection. Let me be clear - deselection is not and has never been the answer, deselection is dangerous, divisive, and profoundly undemocratic. It is bullying; a corruption of the highest degree and I am disgusted - and so should you be.

The Labour Party is a coalition of left-wing ideas. Whether you are a Blairite or a hard socialist, we stand under the same banner for a reason. And that reason is that we believe that we are so much stronger when we stand together than when we stand alone. Or at least that's what I thought. The disunity that is being spread amongst the party - from all its wings - is toxic. Period. It is beyond dangerous and will spell the end of the party as we know it, I have no doubt about that.

This coalition, however, believes in democracy. It believes in its members. And whatever you believe in Jeremy Corbyn, that so-called momentum march earlier this week was riddled with individuals who would sooner see the party destroyed than winning elections. Socialist Workers, Leninists, Trotskyites and more are not the people that the leadership and the PLP should be listening to. They are not the Labour Party, and they will never be the Labour Party - or at least the Labour Party I am a member of.

This week's behaviour, has, from both sides of the argument done nothing but make this party an embarrassment. An embarrassment because the world knows what we stand for. And the reality is that this week we have done the entire opposite. In both sides of the parliamentary argument, I see people doing what they are doing to further themselves. I call on all of those people to stop and take a long and hard look at themselves, to read their party card and remind themselves what we stand for. Because this week I have seen very little but egoism, manoeuvring, and self-obsession. Your self-obsession, your behaviour will do nothing to help the people of this country who need your help. It will not help those forgotten by this tory government, one that cared so much about solving internal disputes that it held a dangerous referendum which has spelt nothing but disaster.

This is a call, more than anything, for party unity. Whatever happens now, over the next month or more, we must not let the minority in the national party, who care more about themselves than anything, divide us. The party that emerges from this needs to work to drive hatred from the party and the world. Because hatred will not win us an election.

If this kind of behaviour that we've been seeing continues - of talk of deselection, of disunity, of non-labour members having an influence on party decisions - I will rip up my party card, and I will never vote Labour. And I will not be alone.